Texas Rose, the Thaw, and the Beasts

Raymond Raposa's ramshackle folk and pitch-dark music would sound at home in either a Village coffee shop or a roadhouse.

Raymond Raposa's reedy voice would sound at home in either a Village coffee shop or a roadhouse, but the pitch-dark music ranges far and wide through organic and electronic textures, often combing the two. The resulting overall sound is cool-- it has a lot of potential for surprises, which Raposa rarely wastes. "No Trouble" is among the finest examples on his sixth album of all of this at work. His filtered, distant vocal is balanced by thumping drums pushed way up in your face, the occasional squeal of a synthesizer or strummed surf chord and a couple of massive guitar outbursts that erupt like bubbling lava from the song's slow-footed shamble. "You be my getaway car and I'll steal everything you need," Raposa sings just before the final eruption, ramming home the sense of unease and danger the music naturally conjures.

The extremes of Castanets' sound are exemplified by "Rose" and "Lucky Old Moon". The former opens the record with a bare and dry acoustic guitar part and completely unvarnished vocal, and brings in a bit of string bass, drums, and steel guitar-- there is a tiny bit of keyboard, but it mostly sounds like the last song of the night in some godforsaken roadhouse. "Lucky Old Moon" opens with spaced-out keys and a drum machine and never comes back to earth, preferring to shoot Raposa through an icy void. It's a neat look for him and one of the most explicitly electronic/ambient songs on any of his albums. It's also one of many tracks on the album that operates primarily as a mood piece. Raposa's lyrics are frequently great, but in spite of that, feeling trumps songwriting for the most part on Texas Rose.

He does save the best for last, though, as closer "Dance, Dance" shows him in complete control of his sound for over six spellbinding minutes. The song is rhythmically spare and has a harmonic structure that welcomes ebb and flow in the arrangement, and Raposa brings in small details to accent lines like, "We stayed in, dodged our friends/ Did some drugs and our best to disappear." It ends the album on a note of dejected but oddly graceful beauty, which is perfect territory for a guy of Raposa's talents. Overall, Texas Rose, the Thaw, and the Beasts is a good mood record, a midnight opus that sounds great while it's playing but doesn't much travel with the listener beyond its runtime.